I hadn’t even needed to negotiate on salary or benefits. They’d offered me more than I’d expected for my first civilian job. I quickly found out why. It was pretty much a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week kind of job, which wasn’t any different than my job with the senator. I was usually up at four in the morning, on calls or social media starting at six, and then slugging my way through a whole series of to-dos. Those ranged from organizing interviews, making sure Brady was prepared for interviews, or responding to a host of companies who wanted to sponsor him in some way from cowboy boots to underwear to earbuds.
It was all-consuming, and I was loving every second of it. It was keeping me on my toes, filling my brain, challenging me in a way working for the senator hadn’t done in a long time. I was learning again. Learning people, motivations, and an entirely new industry.
Outside the Miami airport, where we’d all connected, we were ushered into a limousine. I was in my new uniform of jeans, a tailored jacket, and a tank. Lee was in his suit, and Brady was in his concert uniform because we were heading straight from the airport to the venue. He wore his torn-up jeans partnered with a flannel shirt opened to reveal a white tank underneath, like any rock star. With the casual ease of a lion. And he’d have all the cubs and lionesses swooning over him by the end of the night when he was in just that tank with sweat pouring down him.
As the door to the limousine shut behind us, Marco, the security guard I knew best, slid in next to the driver and said into his earpiece, “Ghost moving out.”
Brady and I shared a smirk. Ghost was the name they’d given him after I’d teased Tanner, the guy in charge, about not being up to snuff with the Secret Service. “You don’t even have a code name for him,” I’d said flippantly, and they’d promptly chosen the name of his latest single. It wouldn’t be hard for anyone to figure out.
“This is your first show, so don’t be surprised by the crush of people backstage,” Lee said to me. “I just sent you a list of things I’d like you to do at the venue. Make sure the sponsors all get their shot of Brady with their merchandise. But your number one job is to entertain the VIPs until he can meet with them.”
I opened the list, scanned over it, and sent it to my private folder. I liked that Lee was all tech and very little paper. It made things easier. Especially when I’d spent a considerable part of the first two weeks on the job at home in Wilmington.
I wasn’t quite ready to find a place in New York City to rent. The city was Lee and Brady’s home base, but I wasn’t sure it was for me. Neither of them had made being in the city a requirement, even when Brady had offered me a room at his place when I was in town. I’d declined and, instead, just used the train for the days I had to be with them. The two-hour journey had allowed me to continue to work both ways.
Starting today, we’d be together for a few weeks as Brady kicked off his official tour. It was a trial run for the worldwide tour that really began in January. The goal of these five early stops was simply to work out the kinks in the show. He had dancers, backup singers, pyrotechnics, and the band themselves to coordinate with. I’d been pretty floored with the number of people involved.
At the practices at a sound stage in New York, I’d taken pictures and posted tantalizing hints of what was to come on his social media accounts. Lee said I was single-handedly responsible for increasing their ticket sales by ten percent. I very seriously doubted it, but I wouldn’t know because I was in the dark when it came to the money side of the business.
His last PR manager, Fiona, had been part PR and part business manager, which meant she’d had access to his accounts. It had ended badly, but I still hadn’t been read in on the full thing. I just knew she’d stolen money and left with the nondisclosure agreement in place that Brady had mentioned at Mac’s wedding. Since Fiona had been gone, there’d been an increase in threats made against Brady, and most of his staff believed they were coming from her. But there was no proof.
Hence the security, which I had very little faith in.
When we got to the stadium, the crowd waiting there went wild. The swarm of people around Brady had been the hardest thing for me to get used to. Senator Matherton had drawn crowds, too, but only when we were out on the campaign trail. Plus, they were planned events with politically like-minded people. Calm, listening. Matherton had never been one to draw the hate crowds. Brady’s screaming fans popped up at the drop of a hat. Like when Brady had literally dropped his hat outside his apartment building the other day, and one person had realized who he was and had started screaming his name. What had followed was a whole host of people scrambling in our direction and the bodyguards hustling us into a nearby building.
It had been disconcerting. The security had been almost as nervous as us.
Now, Brady waved at the crowd being held back by nothing more than ropes. The screaming was at such a high pitch I swore there were only females in the throng. But as we neared the back door of the stadium, a man in a cowboy hat jumped over the ropes and came running at us.
Marco and
